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Category Archive: Events

Welcome back to returning students and welcome to our incoming freshman and transfer students! Over the summer our sustainability team was working on updating our campus sustainability website. It’s now ‘gone live’ and you can check it out for yourselves – a one-stop shop for finding information on: sustainability efforts on campus; info on degrees, classes and faculty working in the field; events with a green tinge; and, much more! Check it out HERE.

Your first opportunity to learn more about being green is checking out the documentary “Disruption”, Sunday, Sept. 7, 7 p.m., University Union, Christie Theatre.

We look forward to a great academic year and working together across campus – students, faculty and staff – to keep our campus moving towards enhancing and improving our sustainability efforts.

Check out these great opportunities to ‘green-up’ for Spring (and every season!)

Student organizations across campus are working hard to bring you important information, opportunities to participate and have some sustainable fun. Visit one of the booths during the week, get a ticket, enter your ticket to be eligible to win prizes (awarded at the end of the week). Check out these happenings and plan to attend a few to increase your Eco U knowledge!

Wednesday, April 23: Conservation and Biodiversity – learn about invasive species and biodiversity. Union booth across from the Credit Union.

Wednesday, April 23: Ducks Unlimited student chapter is sponsoring a presentation by Steve Stoinski, US Fish and Wildlife Service Agent, 6-8 p.m. in the Christie Theater; Focus will be on conservation and federal law enforcement

“Winter is getting weirder, and a coalition of Olympic athletes has seen enough. As Sochie’s Winter Olympics threaten to become the warmest in history, more than 100 Olympians have signed a petitions urging world leaders to take action against climate change.

Sochi is just the latest in a string of summery Winter Games, and the athletes say their sports are in danger unless an Olympic-style effort is launched to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Although climate change can also promote wild winter weather like a recent spate of U.S. snowstorms, those unusual outbursts do little to offset the long global slog toward warmth, especially in winter-sports hotspots like Vancouver or Sochi.

‘Snow conditions are becoming much more inconsistent, weather patterns are more erratic, and what was once a topic for discussion is now reality and fact,’ U.S. cross-country skier Andrew Newell says in a statement released this week by the U.S.-based Protect Our Winters campaign. ‘Our climate is changing and we are losing are winters.’

At least 105 Olympians from 10 different countries have signed the petition so far, including 85 Americans. They want world leaders to carry on their Olympic spirit from Sochi to Paris, where a major U.N. climate summit will be held in 2015.

‘For the next two weeks, I’ll be in Sochi giving it my all on the ski course, just like thousand of Olympic athletes from around the world, putting politics, religion, all of our differences aside,’ Newell says. ‘Coming together for something that is bigger than one individual, or even one country. Next year in Paris, world leaders will also have that chance. Previous climate conferences have ended with nothing to show for it, but Paris needs to be different. We can’t risk inaction any longer and we’re asking our world leaders to come together in the spirit of something bigger than just our individual goals.’

Temperatures in Sochi have already topped 60 degrees Fahrenheit this week, creating slushy conditions that have frustrated many skiers and snowboarders. But the problem goes far beyond Sochi, as highlighted in a recent study led by University of Waterloo researcher Daniel Scott. Of the 19 cities that have previously hosted a Winter Olympics, as few as 10 may still be cold enough by 2050 to host again, according to the study.”

For the rest of the article and a nifty infographic on The Winter Olympics in a Warming World go HERE.

For the fifth year, the UW-Green Bay community is taking part in ReycleMania (www.recyclemaniacs.org), a national friendly competition and benchmarking tool for college and university recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus communities. Working with UWGB haulers – Waste Management (trash), Advanced Disposal (recycling), and SaniMax (pre-consumer organic waste) – data is collected on the volume of each be generated from our campus during each of the 8 weeks of the event (Feb. 2 – March 29). Using this data, our campus is ranked against others of the 500+ participants in various categories. We are participating in the Per Capita Classic, Waste Minimization and Grand Champion categories. During the week of March 3 – 7, look for special events to support our RecycleMania efforts! In the meantime, buy less, reuse more and recycle what you can! To learn our current status, check in here or at the UWGB Sustainability Facebook site for weekly updates starting the week of Feb. 17th.

When student’s leave campus for the summer, typically not all of their belongings get packed into the car and often end up in a dumpster on the way to the landfill. This year, in partnership with Goodwill Industries of North Central Wisconsin, the Office of Residence Life and the Sustainability Office piloted a “Move-Out” donation drive. With student RAs helping distribute donation bags to each room/suite in all of the buildings in housing, students had the opportunity to fill up the bags with reusable items and drop them off at one of seven collection sites. Goodwill picked up several times during Finals week and will do one last pick-up early this week (May 20). Check back here to see the weight of items that will be sold through Goodwill to benefit people across North Central Wisconsin. Much better then ending up sitting in a landfill slowly decomposing over time!

The final numbers are in! Congratulations to everyone for a solid showing in this year’s competition. The results are cumulative over the entire 8 weeks of the competition. Keep your waste minimization and recycling habits going for the rest of the year!

We’re in our last week of RecycleMania – so let’s make it a good one! When you’re emptying out your car of any road-trip trash – remember to recycle what can be recycled! Results are in for the first six weeks and we’re hanging in there. Our paper/cardboard compactors will be emptied this week, so that tonnage will be added to our totals and will help our overall recycling numbers. Stay tuned!

Week 4 Results are in! We’re holding our own – middle-of-the-pack for the most part. One thing that will boost up our overall recycling rate is when our two 42 cubic yard paper/cardboard compactors are emptied/weighed toward the end of RecycleMania. All the paper/cardboard you recycle go into these compactors (one is behind the Union and one is behind IS, in case you wondered), so those materials are not reflected in our current numbers.

Week 2 is in the books (or recyling center and lanfill, in this situation). Our efforts are improving but we still have a lot of room to do better. Less is more if you’re talking about recycling – less in the landfill and more in the recycling bin, so make the effort to recycle what you can! Less is less if you think about what you need to buy in the first place – have a reusable water bottle and that’s one less plastic bottle to be recycled. It’s all about the choices you make!